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What is referral spam and how do I discourage it?

A note from the management. If you run a blog and you suddenly see an influx of traffic in your referral log, take care. Some of the traffic may be from what are called "blog spammers" or "referral spammers".

These parasitic organisms of the web use automated web crawlers to read your blog for no purpose other than to show up in your traffic log. Why? They want you to click on that link in your log, visit their site, and deposit a fraction of a penny into their bank account from site traffic ad view deals.

Sleazy, eh?

Here is a sampling of the more typical ones, pulled from my own log:

Some blogging platforms let you block or filter these. Some don't. For more, I found a post with a good cross section of information on the topic here.